If I was pressed on the point I suppose I’d have to concede that in my time as the world’s leading source of inspiration I’ve picked up as many enemies as I have fans, and that their levels of adoration and fury are about even. Like Bono I’m a polarising figure, although my ratio of haters to fans is a marked improvement on his; mine being 1:1 and his being the entire population of the earth:Bono.

There are those who say this site has nothing to do with doing good, nothing to do with helping people or moving the world to its future, that it has only to do with enhancing my own reputation, that it’s just a self-aggrandising, self-obsessed exercise in self-promotion. To them I say only this: if that were so, would I really give away some of my hard-earned savings every month? If I were so selfish, would I really take the time to research and vouch for a Charity of the Month each and every month? Would I try as hard as I do to enthuse and motivate the masses, persuading others to give if it was all about me? To these questions I say most strongly ‘nay’. All of which, appropriately enough, brings us to the announcement of August’s Charity of the Month: it’s me.

Let me explain.

You will recall I’m using my formerly rubbish legs to run two 10Ks, having sighed heavily as I updated you on my training far more often than was necessary or interesting. It started out as a small scale thing, a few of us looking to raise a few hundred quid for a charity we’re fond of, but we’ve ended up with a team of 17 and a target of £3,000. We look set to make that target our bitch, smashing through it like a frustrated estate agent with something to prove smashing through that wall of paper at the end of the assault course on Gladiators.

The money will go to Yaknak Projects, a tiny wee charity set up by four friends to run two children’s homes in Nepal. They support 16 boys in small, family-style homes and need £16,000 a year to cover food, clothes, healthcare, education, rent and salaries for their live-in carers. This is good people doing a good thing, regular people doing something. And I’ll admit to not being fully objective here; I’m friends (smirk) with the trustees and do a fair bit for them, but this is full on proper good. So I’m sponsoring myself – along with the rest of the team – knowing every penny I donate will go to Nepal; the trustees cover admin themselves. This is money well spent.

The whole thing points to the unavoidable conclusion that I am almost completely ace. You have aceness within you too. If you’ve ever found a single word on The Zero slightly interesting, if you’ve ever smiled weakly at a gag I thought was laugh-out-loud, if you’ve ever been inspired to Butterfly your way to a better life without actually getting around to doing it, now’s the time to pay it back and sponsor us here. Ta!

The type of do-gooding that Zeroism hasn’t yet become famous for takes place on a number of different levels. Some weeks I’ll address the UN on my latest initiative to reduce humanity’s carbon footprint, some weeks I’ll surgically attach a spy camera to my thorax and film inside an abattoir to convert millions to vegetarianism, and some weeks I’ll get rid of a load of old junk to charity shops and make out it’s worth writing about. Like I say; different levels.

This week, as it happens, I’ve been clearing through Zero Towers. There’s two things going on here. First, there’s yer basic anti-materialism where stuff for the sake of stuff just ain’t on; there’s nothing like a few weeks in a developing country to help you thin out your possessions. Second, there’s yer basic environmentalism where if there’s stuff I own I’m not using it’s going to waste as much in my cupboard as in a landfill. You read that right: I’ve turned a spring clean into a moral crusade.

I’ve been through books (ditching novels I bought for looking good on a bookcase), CDs (ditching an awful lot of awful albums that sucked me in with a good lead single, along with the entire back catalogues of Girls Aloud and Sugababes bought in a sustained moment of weakness) and DVDs (most of Star Wars can now piss up a rope). I’ve ditched shirts and ties (I’m not a manager any more!), trousers (mine), skirts, handbags and jewellery (Mrs Zero’s) and gloves, scarves and belts. I filled about six bags with stuff and carted it down to the Salvation Army which takes absolutely anything. It doesn’t care about stuff looking good or working or about basic health and safety, it just flogs stuff dead cheap to people who want it and sends the money to people who need it and dig Jesus. I don’t myself but he runs a hell of a charity shop; most of our furniture has come from his place and for about £1.50.

There was a stack of old pillow cases and towels, a few of which we cut up for dusters; something I didn’t realise people did except on those tedious home-maker shows on Freeview that tell you the thousand things you can clean with vinegar if you don’t mind your house stinking to high fuck. The rest of them joined the other stuff at the Sally, along with some old PJs and underwear, to be sold as rag. It’s hard to believe there’s still a business for rag in the days of the iPad but there we are; apparently Steptoe’s still knocking about and making cash for charity.

Finally, I went all high tech and hipster by joining Freecycle, the site that was topical for bloggers about four years ago and lets people trade their unwanted stuff for free. Some guy came and took the glass doors for a bookcase that had been at the back of a cupboard for two years, although he was less keen on the old phone charger, the DVD player that doesn’t turn on and the Freeview box without a remote control that only plays BBC2. Sadly they’re now headed for the electrical section of the nearest landfill. Still, I had a pretty good run of getting rid of stuff in the most environmentally friendly way possible.

This week saw the relaunch of official government e-petitions, the initiative that simultaneously demonstrates politicians really do listen to the likes of us and proves they mostly shouldn’t bother. The idea is anyone can start a petition on more or less anything they fancy, have others sign it and, if they get a hundred thousand signatures, have it maybe debated in parliament possibly. It could technically in theory be a mechanism for direct action, potentially in a way rouse the masses more often than once every four years and shake politicians from their complacency. Cynicism, you had me at hello.

Already the site seems to have becomes a bit self-aware. There are petitions demanding petitions stop being rejected and another arguing 100,000 signatures is too high a target. Its author suggests 50,000 instead. “Who’s with me?” he asks. At the time of writing: 77 people. And there’s another problem: most of the petitions are dying on their arses. It’s all a bit silly. There’s even one calling for the abolition of e-petitions. I’d add my name to it but no bugger’d read it.

I’m keeping a technically open mind here, waiting to see if something actually comes of this, hoping a decent-sized charity gets something together but I’m not expecting much. It seems to be the domain of right-ons and dumb-dumbs and the government isn’t promising it’ll debate an issue even if it does get 100,000 signatures. That’s not how it’s meant to go, this ‘government listening to the people’ lark. Meanwhile, people are rioting on the streets of London, Manchester and Birmingham. Maybe they don’t have broadband.

Read through the Nepal Diaries, you could reach the end thinking I hate the place, presenting as they do an endless parade of poverty, frustration and half-empty glasses. But it’s a cracking country, a ramshackle would-be paradise packed full of friendly, generous people, packed full of culture and tradition and cracking food, packed full of energy and activity and ambition. It’s just a shame so much of it gives me the shits.

There are reasons to despair and feel hopeless here, and I’ve had my share of feeling both. But there are reasons to feel hopeful and optimistic, and every so often I give them a bash too. There’s discrimination against women to make you sick but women and men fighting it. There’s a caste system and prejudice like a localised racism but people saying it’s a pile of bollocks. There’s poverty like you wouldn’t believe but people figuring their way out of it, people working to change the systems that keep them poor.

In my last week in Nepal I visited Mahaguthi, a Fairtrade shop in Lalitpur. Here we have some nice stuff and the usual tourist dreck you’d find anywhere but no workers screwed over, no people kept down and poor. It sells handmade paper through a UNICEF cooperative in Bhaktapur that pays its workers a decent wage and counts women as more than 50% of its workforce. It sells bags, purses and camera bags from the Women’s Skills Development Project in Pokhara that employs disabled, divorced, abused and low-caste women. It sells nettle cloth from the Allo Cloth Production Club in the remote Sankhuwasabha district and Mithila paintings from the women of the Southern Terai, and all under the watchful eyes of the World Fair Trade Organization and the Fair Trade Group Nepal. This is how the world will right itself: people working together as opposed to people screwing each other over. This is how Nepal will progress. This and a shitload of aid.

So there’s Nepal for you. You should visit. You’ll have an amazing time, see amazing things, put money into a poor economy and experience what amounts to the most prolonged enema of your life. I’ve offered that as a slogan to the tourist board. Just waiting to hear back…